


A Slip of One's Tongue

by drygin



Series: Birchcaster [4]
Category: Harlots (TV)
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/F, Fluff, Lesbian Sex, Smoking, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:21:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28712727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drygin/pseuds/drygin
Summary: Nancy injures herself while birching, leading Bonny to convince her into taking a break from her vigorous work regime.
Relationships: Nancy Birch/Bonny Lancaster
Series: Birchcaster [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1805314
Kudos: 4





	A Slip of One's Tongue

**Author's Note:**

> Well, we all knew this was coming. This fic takes place after the events of "Correspondence Across the Sea".
> 
> Enjoy!

Nancy’s bedroom is smothered in darkness when she wakes up. She lurches forwards, sweat-sodden sheets clinging to her skin, and clutches a hand to her chest to feel her heart pounding beneath her shift. Gasping shallowly for breath, she reaches a hand back to grasp the wooden headboard behind her, reminding herself where she is.

Did she scream? Nancy runs a hand over her face, brushing the strands of hair out of her eyes. The sensation of terror is still fresh in her veins, but the events of the nightmare are already slipping through her fingers as she tries to remember them. She pushes back the blankets tangled around her chest and sits up in bed, hissing through her teeth as the change in position causes a dull pain twinges through her shoulder.

With her other hand, she fumbles for a tinderbox on the bedside table, fiddling with it in the dark for several moments before she manages to light a candle. The soft glow emanating from the flame eases the tightness in Nancy’s chest somewhat, but she knows sleep won’t come easily again until she shakes off her feeling of paranoia.

Standing up from her bed, she leaves the bedroom. Bonny is asleep on the floor in the other room, lying before the dead logs in the hearth. Nancy steps around her, sitting down in a chair placed next to the wall. She leans her arm over the back of it, inhaling sharply when the movement causes a nerve in her shoulder to pinch again.

Her fingertips brush past rough fabric, and after a bit of prodding in the dark, she realises Bonny’s coat is hung over the back of the chair.

She draws the coat into her lap, its heaviness a grounding weight that distracts her from the shadows lingering around her in the house. Bunching the frock coat in her fists, she wraps it around her body. It smells of Bonny, which is surprising at first until it isn’t. What else does she expect it to smell like?

Letting her fingers roam over the coat, she notices a rip in one lapel, a hole where a button seems to be missing, and several ink-stains on the sleeve. Tutting at Bonny’s carelessness, she takes the coat with her back to the bedroom, draping it over her lap and beginning to make repairs with a needle and thread under candlelight.

By the time she has sewn the tear on the coat closed and scrubbed out the ink-stains on the fabric with a wet rag, her head has begun to droop forwards onto her chest. She finds a spare button shoved inside one of the pockets – a stroke of luck – and fixes it into place, stretching to remain awake until the job is done.

Once she has finished, she blows out the candle beside the bed, her intention to take Bonny’s coat back to her before she falls asleep, but then she blinks and it’s already morning, the coat still lying rumpled underneath her. She hurries into the other room, relieved to find Bonny still asleep, and returns the frock coat to the back of the chair.

Nancy is almost reluctant to wake Bonny up. The navy woman is sprawled on the floor, her blanket tucked under an arm and twisted around one ankle. Her tricorne hat is tilted over her eyes and Nancy lifts it off her head, Bonny squinting against the morning light coming in through the windows.

“Hello.” She smiles up at Nancy, jutting her chin out an inch towards her.

Nancy has learned that, rather than the mocking gesture she at first thought it was, this small gesture is Bonny’s way of requesting a kiss. She likes to think she has begun to recognise these little signs more easily. Now, when Bonny asks after the fashion of the women they pass by in the street, remarking on their clothes and jewellery in admiration, Nancy knows Bonny is asking her what _she_ would like to see her wearing.

She can’t stand trying to translate such secret language. She likes the obvious, when what is said is meant without any hidden meaning behind it. She decides to oblige Bonny this time, crouching down to drop her tricorne hat onto her chest and graze her lips past the other woman’s cheek.

“Up.” She pats Bonny’s shoulder, prompting her to rise to her feet. As Nancy stands up too, a muscle in her shoulder knots, but she tries not to let the discomfort bother her. “Culls will be at the house soon. You need to find something to do with yourself for a few hours until I’m done with them.”

“Can’t I stay? Put me away in a room, I’ll behave,” Bonny replies. “I don’t believe that lie for one second,” Nancy responds. She begins preparing for her first cull, tying her hair back behind her head, adjusting her bodice, and pulling her black coat gingerly coat over her shoulders. “You’ve seen enough of me already. You don’t need to see this side of my work.”

Her clogs are normally set to the side of the bedroom doorway, but today, the spot on the floor is occupied by only one shoe. Nancy bends down, searching underneath the table for her clog’s missing twin.

“Have you seen my other shoe?” she asks Bonny, turning around to see her spinning one of her clogs on a finger. With an exasperated sigh, she sets her birch against the wall, pulling off her other shoe and hurling it at Bonny’s head. Bonny yelps and ducks out of the way, but keeps a hold of Nancy’s shoe, her laughter echoing off the walls as Nancy gives chase to her around the table.

After three laps, Bonny collapses against the furniture’s edge, panting with a grin, and allows Nancy to snatch her clog back.

“Alright, alright. I know when I’m beaten.”

Rolling her eyes, Nancy crouches down to put both of her shoes on, stomping the floor a few times to slip her feet into them properly. “Good. Now, how about you go and –” She reaches out to pick up her birch from where she had left it leaning on the wall, her fingers closing around empty air. “ _Bonny!_ ”

Her dress skirt whips and snaps around her legs as she strides after Bonny, yanking open the curtain leading to the bedroom she has fled inside. Bonny already has one leg hoisted over the windowsill when she barges into the room, Nancy’s birch clenched in her hand. She swings herself out of the window, her boots crunching against the gravel outside.

Behind her, Nancy scowls and leans her head out of the window. Slapping her palms against the windowsill, she barks to Bonny’s disappearing figure, “I hope you get run over by a carriage in the street!”

Much to Bonny’s dismay, Nancy is sure, she still takes her regular line-up of culls for the morning, substituting her birch for a handful of other items she finds around the house. A walking stick a cull had previously left on accident and never returned for, and even a poker by the hearth. The objects leave pleasing marks on the flesh that don’t bleed deeply. She finds them strange to hold, but they suffice.

The demeaning words Nancy spits to culls come easily, especially while she thinks of Bonny sauntering around London with _her_ birch. It’s during a session with her third cull when she lifts the walking stick above her head that the band of tension in her shoulder snaps and worsens to a fierce agony. Her arm goes taut and she drops the walking stick, clutching her shoulder with an alarmed shout.

“Is something wrong?” her cull asks, half-dressed and confused. Nancy grunts, trying to wave off the matter, but she can’t continue working like this.

“That’s it for today. You’re done.”

“I paid for an hour!”

Nancy throws the money at him, and he leaves after pulling his clothes back on, stomping out of the house. Bonny makes her grand return later, entering the house with a smirk and Nancy’s birch tucked under her arm. She finds Nancy struggling to reach for a decanter of gin on a high shelf, watching her in confusion as she attempts to straighten her arm above her head, curses spilling out of her mouth. “Is everything alright?”

“It will be,” Nancy answers her through gritted teeth. “As soon as I can get this bloody thing off the shelf!” She reaches higher, her fingers brushing the decanter, and it wobbles precariously on the edge of the shelf. Bonny hardly manages to yank her backwards in time to avoid the decanter toppling forwards into her face. It smashes on the floor, glass shards scattering in front of Nancy’s feet.

“Jesus, that nearly cracked your skull open!” Bonny exclaims, releasing Nancy’s arm.

Nancy scowls at the mess. “I’ll clean it up.” She stomps over to the cupboard to retrieve a broom, snarling when her shoulder protests at the action. Frustrated, she slams the cupboard door shut. Bonny is at her side in an instant, and she begrudgingly allows the other woman to rub a hand up and down her back in consolation.

“You’re far more impatient than usual today,” she quips. “What’s happened to you?”

“I’m bloody useless, that’s what’s happened,” Nancy mutters, turning around to face Bonny. The navy woman is standing so close to her, it would only take the smallest of movements to lean her head on Bonny’s shoulder and sulk like a fussy infant, but that’s one moment of self-pity too many for her taste. “It’s my shoulder. I must’ve tweaked a muscle.”

“I didn’t make the strain worse by having you chase after me for this back, did I?” Bonny holds out Nancy’s birch with a guilty expression.

Nancy takes it back, sighing. “No, but it didn’t make it any better. I must have thumped it in my sleep. I had an awful nightmare,” she admits, unsure exactly why she has chosen to burden Bonny with this information. What does she expect to glean by telling her? She doesn’t want pity.

“Ah, I see.” Bonny taps her foot on the floor, silence hanging in the air between them. “You know you can always wake me up when something like that happens, if you need someone to talk to.”

Nancy nods. “Of course.”

“I’ll clean up this mess, you go and lie down. I’m making us stew for dinner tonight.”

“Stew?” Nancy raises an eyebrow, looking around the room. “I don’t see any.”

“I’m _going_ to make stew for us,” Bonny rephrases her statement. “I need to chop up some carrots and potatoes first...” She turns her head, taking stock of the lack of anything edible on the shelves surrounding them. “I need to go out and find carrots and potatoes first. Where does one buy the best produce in Soho?”

Lacking the strength to argue, Nancy gives her directions to the nearest market, skulking off to her bedroom after Bonny leaves the house. She collapses on the bed and sleeps for an hour or so, waking up to the delicious smell of broth from the other room. Bonny carries two bowls of stew (that Nancy is quite sure she filched from an inn across the way instead of making herself) into the bedroom, presenting Nancy with the first. She sits down on the edge of the bed, eating contentedly.

Nancy prods her spoon at the chunks of meat in her stew, scraping up a spoonful of vegetables and soup. After several more mouthfuls, she sets her bowl on the bedside table, Bonny stacking hers once it’s empty on top. They nap throughout the rest of the day, waking up intermittently with dry mouths and limbs tingling with numbness, but the sleep Nancy experiences is dreamless and pleasant.

At one point, she wakes up curled on top of Bonny’s slowly rising and falling chest, the other woman’s arm draped over her side. Nancy lays her head back down, pressing her cheek to the warm skin of Bonny’s collarbone and exhaling across the inked swallow captured in mid-flight there. She takes a hold of Bonny’s hand, stroking her thumb gently over her knuckles and watching Bonny come to with a sluggish yawn.

“Good afternoon. How’s your shoulder?” Bonny asks her.

“Better.” Nancy answers. Swallowing dryly, she rummages a hand inside the pockets of her coat for her hip flask and twists open the cap, swallowing a mouthful of warm drink.

“Aren’t you going to share?” Bonny asks.

Nancy scoffs, holding it out to her, and Bonny takes a swig. One moment when they are drinking glides seamlessly into the next when they are kissing. Nancy pulls herself on top of Bonny, lying so their faces are inches away from touching. Eventually, the fleeting touches of their lips deepen to something far more passionate and full of want, Nancy swiping her tongue across Bonny’s lower lip.

Her lips are dry. She moves her head, biting Bonny’s neck softly with her teeth, and rolls her hips, the layers of her dress scraping against the rough fabric of the breeches underneath her. A moan spirals out of Bonny’s mouth, and, pleased with the result, Nancy grinds her waist down harder for a second time, eliciting a carnal groan from Bonny that sends a shiver of excitement down her spine.

“I’m not going to undress,” she warns the other woman sternly.

“That’s fine,” Bonny replies, pressing her lips together to let out a long “ _hmm_ ” when Nancy nips at her ear. “I don’t suppose there’s anything you’d like me to try doing with you?”

“Kissing’s enough.”

“Kissing is broad. Where would you like my lips to be?” A grin plays on Bonny’s mouth as she leans forwards, pressing her body closer to Nancy’s.

Nancy pushes her back down onto the bed. “I’m not happy with you, Lancaster. You robbed me of a cull this morning. I saw a few of them through alright, but the last one demanded his fee back since I gave him such a shit show.”

Bonny shrugs. “His loss.”

Nancy threads her fingers through Bonny’s hair, cradling her head to her torso despite the momentary irritation she feels at her nonchalant tone. “Not his, _mine_. I could have used the money.”

Bonny pulls her head back. Parting from Nancy, she shuffles backwards on the bed to create enough distance between them to talk seriously. “Let me pay you to set things right between us. I’m sorry about taking your birch, I only wanted it to be a harmless game between us. Truly.”

Nancy tries not to let the flicker of smugness she feels in her chest show on her face. “Well, I suppose that could work, then.”

“You should be grateful, you know.”

Nancy flinches, clenching her jaw. This sailor is terribly good at wearing her nerves. “Oh, yeah? What are you contributing to my house other than chatter?”

“I have five crowns in my pocket and a mouth that’s eager to please,” Bonny grins.

Rolling her eyes, Nancy reaches over and pulls open the bedside table drawer, retrieving her smoking pipe from inside.

Bonny’s face falls at the sight of it. She watches Nancy prepare it with an irked expression. “Must you? It’s a horrible habit to kick.”

“That’s a shame.” Nancy dips a match into the end of her pipe, lighting the shreds of tobacco she has stuffed inside. She blows a stream of grey down the crevice between Bonny’s breasts and follows the rising smoke with her hand by gliding it up the other woman’s neck.

Bonny’s breathing hitches. Her eyes watch her, enraptured, and she tenses in anticipation for the coming jab or barb or mockery, but Nancy says nothing. So, as usual, Bonny takes it upon herself to fill the gap left by her silence.

“As I was saying…” She clears her throat, chuckling uneasily with Nancy’s hand still collared around her neck, and gestures to herself in an extravagantly cocky manner. “You get all of this, Nancy. You get me, instead of some weepy man to spend all afternoon with.”

Nancy sets her pipe aside, sliding her hands under Bonny’s shirt over the abs on her stomach. “And these, are they mine too?”

“Without a doubt.”

Bonny unbuttons the front of her shirt, revealing dark olive skin that Nancy marvels at the smoothness of. Her hands roam from Bonny’s waist up to her stomach, wandering over her breasts and cupping them in her hands almost experimentally. How long has it been since she’s held a pair of tits? The warmth of them feels frighteningly unfamiliar. She looks down to see Bonny smiling, and the corner of her own mouth twists upwards into a derisive smirk.

“Take the rest of it off, then, if you want it to be such a show.”

Bonny kicks off both of her boots, letting them drop to the floor beneath the bed. Trying to shuck off her breeches while still being pinned underneath Nancy’s weight is a frustrating affair, Bonny twisting and turning. Nancy cackles at the sight, lifting a leg off Bonny’s torso to allow her to move more freely.

“How polite,” Bonny thanks her, pulling off her breeches altogether. Nancy is unsure where to look, focusing her gaze on the patterns of light bruises her teeth have left scraped over Bonny’s collarbone and pretending she can’t see the thick curls between Bonny’s legs. Damn her for being so confident. Her experience in bedding others is far too telling in her naturalness with getting undressed, and it causes Nancy’s heart to pang with sadness at not being the first, and unlikely the last, to see her like this.

She shakes herself out of her woes, smiling. She knows where she wants Bonny’s lips to be now. “The coin’s been taken care of, but the service is still owed. You and my cull have swapped places with each other, which means you have to do as I say for the next hour.”

“And if I don’t?” Bonny ventures to ask.

The thwack of Nancy’s palm striking Bonny’s cheek, battering her head to one side, resounds through the room. A whimper slips out of her mouth. _Shit_. Nancy panics momentarily, worried she has struck Bonny too hard, but then the other woman turns her head back around, her eyes shining with adoration despite the red mark rising on her cheek.

Her voice is an excited whisper. "Do it again.”

The second slap, a backhand, makes Nancy’s hand sting. Strands of Bonny’s hair, slick with sweat from the stuffy heat and smoke thickening the air inside the bedroom, stick to Nancy’s fingers. She is sure to mix sharp with the sweet, stroking the knuckles of her hand down the side of Bonny's face. She pets her hair, murmuring fondly, “My Bonny.”

Bonny’s dizzy smile nearly makes Nancy forget where she is.

“Alright.” She resumes her stern manner. “Put your head back before I change my mind about doing this.” Pulling up her dress skirt, she edges closer to Bonny.

She plants her knees on either side of Bonny’s head, unsure if it’s humanly possible to feel tenser than she does now. Beneath her, Bonny’s eyes widen in astonishment. Even the master of wooing tavern girls doesn’t know what to say to this. For once, she’s deathly silent, afraid that uttering one word will cause Nancy to roll off her chest and disappear out of the room.

She reaches out for Nancy’s waist to guide her forwards and offer some assistance, but Nancy only digs her fingers into her own thighs, her body rigid. She remains still. Inside her head, her inner voice is screaming out. _What the hell are you doing? You haven’t done this before, and she’ll see right through you._

Nancy fixes Bonny with a hard, purposeful stare. “Do you want this?”

Bonny nods her consent. Nancy grasps a fistful of her short dark hair, forcing her head between her legs, and proceeds to ride Bonny’s face until the flesh of her cunt feels bruised and sore from her bucking her hips so furiously.

She has all the grace and elegance of someone who hasn’t been in bed with another person for so many years as well and who has never ridden another woman’s face before. Every movement carries with it a new sensation, a few of which she likes and others which she is blown away by the powerfulness of. She jerks her hips hard and fast enough that she can’t tell what part of Bonny’s face – her tongue or nose or chin – is bumping against the hard bud of her clit.

“Fuck, Bonny,” she growls under her breath, sweat beading across her brow from the exertion. Squashed flat under her weight, Bonny’s tongue can’t do much of the lashing its owner wants it to. It’s up to Nancy to thrust her hips out like a rocking horse and provide enough friction to carry her towards orgasm – that distant feeling of absolute pleasure her experiences with men throughout her childhood had robbed her from ever experiencing, even frightened her away from.

Maintaining a rhythm is both helped and made difficult by how wet she is already, the slickness between her legs making her frenzied movements on top of Bonny faster, but also dulling the sensations of her thrusts and turning them clumsily sloppy. She leans forwards, bracing her palms on the mattress, and it occurs to her that Bonny has been underneath her skirts for a long time.

“Can you breathe?” Nancy asks, and then again more urgently, “Christ, Bonny, can you breathe?”

Bonny doesn’t answer, her face still pressed to her cunt and tongue flicking out in a feeble attempt to keep up with the pace Nancy has set. Nancy lifts her hips off Bonny, tugging her head into view. Both of them are slick with sweat, herself especially, still burdened with the heavy layers of her dress. Bonny is slick with something else, all over her lips and cheeks.

“I think I passed into the great beyond,” she confides to Nancy breathlessly. “I saw arch-angels and they sang ballads of you.”

“Oh, shut up. That’s enough for you, you’re a godawful mess,” Nancy tells her. She swings her leg off Bonny’s torso, stretching out to lie on the bed beside her.

The other woman appears crestfallen at this bruising blow to her ego. “But we’re not finished yet! You haven’t finished.”

“Need I remind you who you’re in bed with?” Nancy asks, sneering sideways at her as she swipes her pipe from the bedside table, taking a drag of smouldering tobacco. “It’ll be a long time yet for me before that happens. Plenty of time until then, though.”

“Plenty of time tomorrow morning?” Bonny asks, a subtle hinting plead to her voice.

Nancy scoffs, batting Bonny’s shoulder with a pillow before turning over to settle down to sleep. “Don’t push your luck.”


End file.
